I am most certainly, without a doubt, a self-confessed retro-gamer. Whether i’m fist-fighting until my last breath in Sega’s Street Fighter, or making a final-lap comeback during a Super Mario Kart session on my SNES — it’s all good. However, those of you who have experienced console issues with these outdated devices – and believe me, issues do and will occur – will know that there is nothing worse than owning a large collection of SNES or Sega Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges without a functioning console to utilise them. Fortunately, the folks over at Retrode understand our need to stay stranded in the “old days”, and have created a device that allows users to play any SNES or Sega Genesis game on their PC and/or iPad. Say hello to the Retrode 2.0…

The German-based Retrode 2 is, as its name suggests, a reiteration of the original Retrode, which was welcomed into the world in February, 2010. Originally this little, black device went about its days creating ROMs from a users’ Mega Drive or SNES cartridge/s. Now, Retrode have taken things a big step forward for retro gamers by morphing the Retrode 2.0  into a unit that not only creates ROMs from any of your old SNES and Genesis games, but also a device that deploys these ROMs to your PC ”under any Operating System, using any emulator” (their words, not mine), and your iPad. At this point, users can connect up to four of their SNES or Genesis controllers and begin experiencing the classics all over again! Check out the Retrode executing what has been dubbed “iCade Mode” on an iPad, below…

Of course, while the Retrode sounds like a great idea, you may have noticed that your favourite electronics retailer hasn’t thrown any on the shelves in their store/s – and this is because the Retrode 2.0 isn’t available for purchase in Australia, at least not yet, anyway. Having said this, you can just as easily have one of these bad boys shipped to you from online stores based in Germany, Japan or the United States (take your pick!) for approximately eighty of your Australian dollars (prior to any shipping charges you may incur, that is). If you have anything you would like clarified in relation to the Retrode, or you would simply like to learn a little more about it, I recommend heading to their fan site - you’ll find a wealth of information including the Retrode‘s history, stories from those who own a Retrode, user-created documentation, a community forum and more!

Have you purchased a Retrode of your very own? If so, have you found any issues regarding  PC compatibility? Or are you finding that your new ROMs are bringing your old games back to life, perfectly? Throw me some comments below and satisfy my curiosity…

It seems that while the company was filing their submission to go public, the engineers and designers haven’t taken their foot off the pedal. Today also marks the release of an updated photo viewer. Photos posted on users walls open to a lightbox when clicked, but instead of comments (and ads) being displayed at the bottom, they are now located to the right.

Sound familiar? Yep, those social networking sluts will know that Google+ treats photos in a very similar way. The difference being that G+ photos display larger, in more a full-screen mode, but essentially there’s a strong similarity between the two.

What do you think? Like the new style, or is this yet another change users will revolt against ?

Last October I was knee deep in SSD technology. Drives here, drives there, drives everywhere, and 2012 is looking to be no different! Today we bring to you OCZ’s well known and critically acclaimed RevoDrive Hybrid, and their enterprise level RevoDrive 3 x2.

Testing Rig:

Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 955 Black Edition @ 3.8Ghz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz G-Skill Ripjaws X (9-9-9-24)
GPU: GTX 580 (1.5GB)

Note: All drives were benchmarked as is, out of the box.

Testing Programs:

AS SSD – 1.6.4237.30508
ATTO Disk Benchmark – 2.47
HD Tune Pro – 4.61

As I mentioned above today we have the high priced and even higher performance 480GB RevoDrive 3 x2, and the consumer orientated RevoDrive Hybrid, boasting 1TB of traditional HDD space with a 100MB SSD.

Both drives were wiped before having Windows 7 64 bit installed on them. We then took the drives through a series of tests and benchmarks using common tools, the data and results of which have been provided below for review.

We’ve also included data from the RevoDrive x2 to compared alongside the newest iteration. It is however important to remember that both storage devices are PCI-e, and as such you shouldn’t expect to get similar performance from a SATA based SSD.

Test One: AS SSD

A common tool used to benchmark traditional Solid State Drives as well as having the ability to benchmark other drives and devices, AS SSD is a great piece of software. We ran all three drives through AS SSD’s extensive tests and compiled the raw data into easy to read graphs.

The sequential read and write test of AS SSD provides valuable information into the writing and reading mechanics of any drive. How fast the drive can write large amounts of data reflects how suitable the drive may be for tasks such as video rendering that reward faster dumps.

The RevoDrive Hybrid boasts a traditional SATA based 900 GB HDD connected to the 100GB PCI-e connected SSD. Through a caching program that OCZ supplies, the drive is able to perform the actions of a normal hard drive with the speed benefits of an SSD. The 390 MB/s read that the Hybrid’s SSD posted is quite impressive, while the 149 MB/s write failed to impress me.

Posting huge results, the 480 GB RevoDrive 3 resulted in a thud echoing out through my house as the drive managed to hit over 750 MB/s and 534 MB/s in the read and write tests respectively.

The 4K-64 Thrd read and write tests give us an insight into the SSD’s ability to load programs, and fast. So if you had a program that needs to load 80MB into RAM, and your 4k-64 result is 80MB/s, it would take two seconds to load said program.

The RevoDrive 3 x2 shot out ahead smashing tboth records that the x2 set last year. While the results for the Hybrid’s SSD look miniscule they’re actually quite good, and only just fall behind the Crucial m4 256GB SATA SSD we tested back in September.

The titular access time test does exactly that, test how quickly AS SSD can access the read and write functions of your drive.

Neither the Hybrid nor RevoDrive 3 x2 managed to best the writest test of the older RevoDrive, however the Hybrid managed to beat both with an impressive 0.042 ms response in the read testing. Talk about a surprise!

The German flag colouring returns once again and with it the AS SSD Overall Score. This final AS SSD test provides a final representative score that depicts the total performance of each drive.

The RevoDrive 3 x2 excelled in the overall score, posting not only the highest score in techAU history, but also the highest score I have ever seen. The Hybrid’s SSD posted an accumulative score just lower than the 240GB Agility 3. Quite impressive for such a small sized drive, but a testament to the impressive hardware OCZ produces.

Test Two: ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark (ATTO from here on out) is one of the most reliable disk storage benchmarking tools available. The freeware tool is widely accepted across the internet for providing accurate figures and results.

OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480 GB PCI-e SSD

The RevoDrive 3 x2 lived up to the hardware promises both on the packaging and on the internet.

Max reads of 1.5 GB/s and max writes of 1.25 GB/s are simply amazing, and definitely show the enterprise targeted usage of the 480GB model. We saw almost maximum speeds in both read and write from halfway through the test.

It’s good to see the speeds were maintained throughout the far end of the ATTO testing, proving that the drive can maintain high speeds and not just hit them occasionally.

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 100 GB PCI-e SSD

The 100 GB SSD on the Hybrid performed incredibly well and outperformed and even managed to outperform the RevoDrive x2 PCI-e SSD.

Maximum reads and writes of 995 MB/s and 824 MB/s respectively really show the performance the sensibly priced drive is able to output. It’s also worth noting that with the caching software that OCZ provides the drive performs even better over time, so you could probably expect to just break the 1 GB/s mark after a few days.

Test Three: HD Tune Pro

We used HD Tune Pro in our testing to determine a number of factors in the read only division. Firstly, the program shows the IOPS performance of the drive on both the 512 bytes level, the 1 MB level and when used in a random fashion. We were then able to find out the average speed of the drive across all three size levels, as well as the access time.

The random test of HD Tune Pro showed off an impressive speed of 971 MB/s, which not only shows us something we’ve already seen, but proves the drive can perform impressive all the time.

Although high, the IOPS count was lower than that of the RevoDrive x2 by almost 6,000 operations per second. The max access time was also quite long during the 512 byte testing, posting up 32 m/s.

The Hybrid basically tops everything we have on record here at techAU. Despite understandably posting slower speeds than the RevoDrive 3, it wiped the board in everything else, posting the highest IOPS scores we have, and the fastest average access times too.

I can’t help but wonder how fast and powerful the Hybrid would be with a 256GB SSD as opposed to the smaller 100 GB model, but I guess OCZ’s hardware engineers found the perfect balance between performance and cost.

Conclusion

RevoDrive 3 x2 - If I was asked to use any SSD (Whether PCI-e or SATA based) I would without even pondering the question choose the RevoDrive 3. Insane performance up and over the 1 GB/s mark, more than enough storage, and low power consumption make this the leader when it comes to benchmarking.

Unfortunately the just price puts this out of reach for many consumers, and ultimately cements it a spot as an enterprise level piece of hardware and storage technology.

RevoDrive Hybrid - The RevoDrive Hybrid is the sensible install point for someone who wants SSD technology and performance but doesn’t want to sacrifice speed, storage, or their savings.

As you saw in the results above, the Hybrid kept up with higher capacity performance based drives, however whether that is due to the great caching software or PCI-e interface remains to be seen. Either way, the Hybrid is a product I highly recommend to anyone and everyone.

Facebook has just filed their initial public offering, the first step in taking the company public. For now the figure being raised is $5 Billion, which will turn hundreds of their employees into millionaires. Hopefully their contracts mean they have to stick around for a while after the filing is rubber stamped.

If you’re looking to buy stock, you’ll need to look for the trading symbol “FB”, after the SEC approves the filing. While exact shareholder stakes in Facebook have largely been kept secret, it is now revealed that Mark Zuckerberg still owns 28.4% of the company. Depending on the valuation of the company, Zuckerberg’s stake may be close to $30 billion once the IPO shares are sold.

The filing also reveals some astonishing figures listed below:

• Net income of $1 billion in 2011, $3.7 billion revenue.
• Facebook had 845 million MAUs as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 39% as compared to 608 million MAUs as of December 31, 2010.
• Facebook had 483 million daily active users (DAUs) on average in December 2011, an increase of 48% as compared to 327 million DAUs in December 2010.
• Facebook had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011.
• There were more than 100 billion friend connections on Facebook as of December 31, 2011.
• Facebook users generated an average of 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day during the three months ended December 31, 2011.

There’s no denying it, those figures are amazing and demonstrates how strong the company is and why now is a great to to file for the IPO. I guess they haven’t yet reached the 1 billion users mark yet, or that’d be surely be included. The S-1 Registration Statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission is embedded below, all 201 pages of it.

Facebook S-1

More @ TechCrunch and The Verge.

Microsoft has just released version 1.0 of the Kinect SDK for Windows. One of the biggest complaints about the beta releases of the SDK was the lack of support for close object recognition. Near mode now allows the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimetres rather than the standard 6 feet.

The 1.0 release of the SDK addresses a number of other issues:

• Support for up to four Kinect sensors plugged into the same computer
• Significantly improved skeletal tracking, including the ability for developers to control which user is being tracked by the sensor
• Near Mode for the new Kinect for Windows hardware, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the device
• Many API updates and enhancements in the managed and unmanaged runtimes
• The latest Microsoft Speech components (V11) are now included as part of the SDK and runtime installer
• Improved “far-talk” acoustic model that increases speech recognition accuracy
• New and updated samples, such as Kinect Explorer, which enables developers to explore the full capabilities of the sensor and SDK, including audio beam and sound source angles, color modes, depth modes, skeletal tracking, and motor controls
• A commercial-ready installer which can be included in an application’s set-up program, making it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployments.
• Robustness improvements including driver stability, runtime fixes, and audio fixes

It’s important to keep in mind that the new Near Mode is only available from the new Kinect for Windows, which isn’t available in Australia. You can see from the screenshot below, connecting an existing Kinect to a computer shows under the range selection ‘NearMode not supported on this device’.

Let’s hope Australian availability for Kinect for Windows arrives soon so Aussie developers can start building Windows 7/8 Kinect-enabled applications.

More information @ MSDN or just download the Kinect SDK 1.0 now.

Via The Verge.

Strangely the Firefox 10 ‘What’s new’ page is filled with quotes like “A better browser for the great good” and a 2 minute video that has nothing to do with the product, but all about their ‘different’ company. Sorry Mozilla, I just don’t care about your charitable non-profit mantra, I care about the best browser and the reality is that Firefox isn’t it.

There’s just nothing new on offer here, which frankly just disappointing from a version 10 release. Look through the features page for Firefox and it’s the same old story, improved standards support, faster speed, etc, that’s all great, but you can’t be as good as the competition to win, you need to be better, much better.

Somewhere along the way, around the time Chrome arrived in the market, you lost your way and your fans have gone. While I’m sure there’s still some die-hards out there that love Firefox, most have moved on. Looking ahead there is always an opportunity for the company to get over themselves and actually built a better product, a different product, an innovative product. Even IE was able to rebuilt and transform into a viable option again.

Check it out for yourself at http://getfirefox.com

There’s an awful lot of rumours about Apple entering the TV market, but this is not it. Apple lawyers get ready for this, Hannspree is selling a 28” 1080p LCD. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of what an Apple branded TV would look like. There’s no clean lines, impressively simple UI and latest generation processor, it’s just an Apple shaped frame around a 28” HDTV.

If you really want to gasp at the nerve of Hannspree, check out the horrible infomercial video at HSN.

More info @ HSN via @Alex_Manchester

Gaming on you’re Xbox with the surround sound cranked may be fun, but will likely piss off your neighbours. Either that or the other people in your house. To solve this problem, you should consider some gaming headphones, particularly if you live in an apartment complex with thin walls.

Solving the volume out issue is one thing, but what about the volume in problem, you know, for those Xbox LAN sessions you have in the street.

Over the past month I’ve spent some time with the Sennheiser X320 gaming headset for the Xbox 360. It features a stylish and comfortable design with green accent, which matches the black / green design of the console. Weighing in at just 280grams, they become like a watch after a while, in that you forget you’re wearing them. Other headsets I’ve used become really uncomfortable after a long gaming session, but the X320 over-the-ear design worked great.

The headset also features a microphone that turns on when you flick it down, and off when you flick it up. It may not sound like a big deal, but its a hell of a lot easier than fumbling to find the mute switch between rounds.

The sound quality of the headset is really good, in fact I even picked up some engine noise intricacies in Forza 4 that I hadn’t noticed before. This is likely due to the low noise amplifier built into the X320.

Issues

While the sound quality is solid, there are a few issues with this headset. The first is the connections are overly complex. First there’s the USB cable connection, then there’s the red and white audio pass-through connectors, then there’s the microphone to controller cable. For such a stylish headset, this is a really ineloquent solution. Maybe it’s a technical limitation of the Xbox, but a simply USB cable to carry audio both ways would dramatically simplify the setup.

Like most users, I connect the Xbox 360 via HDMI these days, this means I had to go find the component cable to use these headphones.

The microphone level is adjustable via the in-line control (along with headphone volume and bass boost), but quickly introduce line noise. This is a pretty big flaw in the product, but if you can keep it low and talk louder, you can work around it.

Price

The Sennheiser X320 Xbox gaming headset sells for around A$199. Shop around and you could find it on sale as cheap as $179.

Gallery

Overall

There’s no way around it, these are expensive, but as a premium headset its not unexpected. The biggest issue is the limitation of Xbox-only. I tried plugging the X320 into the PC but they do not work as a regular headset. The only way I could swallow $200 for a headset is if I could use them for absolutely everything from the mobile phone to the TV. Sadly these are Xbox-only. There’s a bunch of gaming headsets in this space, so look at other options but if your after audio quality, keep the X320 in mind.

We’re all too familiar with the hot buzz words and catch phrases in the technology industry. This video below pokes fun at the heart of technology, where a lot of startups come from, Silicon Valley.

The video features classics like “I retweeted it, I re-blogged it and I checked into it” and “They don’t even have a foursquare venue for their appartment.” My personal favourite is “Is the internet down”, but think they missed one – “OMG twitter’s down”.

It’s a light hearted, amusing 1 minute and 46 seconds, so relax on this Australia day and have a laugh between beers.

Senior Product Manager, Bryan O’Neil Hughes has shown off a sneak preview of Adobe Photoshop CS6. There’s a brand new default look to the interface, this time round it’s much darker. Hughes says it’s designed to allow for a more ‘immersive experience’ that lets the interface to fade away and the images to be the focus point.

Also detailed in the video below are some new features including a new processing tool for RAW support, with many of the features being completely rewritten. Although CS6 is still some time away from release, the new RAW engine is actually the same one used by the Lightroom 4 beta which is available as a free download from Adobe Labs.

There’s also a new rich cursor support, this provides information about brush diameter, hardness and opacity so you’ll know exactly what to expect when using the brush tool. It’s really early days for CS6, so expect there to be plenty more teasers in the lead up to its release, for now enjoy the 2:25 of video.