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Here’s an interesting rumor doing the rounds today. According to Xbox Evolved, Microsoft is exploring the possibility of “forward-compatible” games for the next edition of its Xbox console, which basically means that when you play old Xbox 360 title on the newer machine, it’ll be enhanced with improved graphics, better speed, a new button scheme to fit the new controller, and possibly new features.

The site compares the jump to playing Crysis on a mid-range PC, then updating the video card for better performance. Microsoft is supposedly in a stage of “testing the waters” with this feature before they nail down the final specs of the next Xbox, but wants to put this option out to developers soon so they can implement it in their upcoming titles. Of course, this is all speculation for now seeing that the next generation of consoles is not expected to arrive for a few more years. It certainly sounds like a cool concept, though.

If you're a Radeon user, you may want to check out the newly released Catalyst drivers that AMD has made available today. AMD released the Catalyst series 8.10 drivers for all major platforms, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Linux and the 64-bit iterations thereof. That's a significant amount of driver releases, many of which have platform-specific fixes.

Some of the changes include the Catalyst Control Center having the ability to control the GPU fan. They also fixed some minor display detection bugs. The operating system that got the most attention in this release was Windows Vista with at least seven specific fixes. You can download the drivers immediately from AMD's site.

Apple recently announced that its new MacBook line would be dumping Intel’s integrated graphics in favor of the new GeForce 9400M. Now, Nvidia has officially unveiled the 9300 and 9400 chipsets and offered a few more details on top of promising a 5x increase in performance compared to Intel’s fastest G45 integrated graphics chipset.

Both chipsets have 16 stream processors, but they differ in clock speeds. The 9300 has a core clock of 450MHz, with 1.2GHz stream processors, while the 9400 has a 580MHz core clock and 1.4GHz stream processors. While they are meant to compete in the low-end sector, Nvidia claims they’ll still get an average of 30fps in a number of top games at minimum settings – this is not saying much but games such as Crysis will at least be playable.

The new chipsets will be able to run high-definition video, support Intel’s Core 2 processors, and can also be chained together with another Nvidia discrete GPU to substantially enhance graphical performance – such as Apple did in its MacBook Pro lines, teaming the 9400M with the 9600M.

Yesterday, we heard about how a serious issue with Eee Box PCs in Japan ended up being problematic enough for Asustek to issue a recall. The problem was a virus located on the system by default, which would copy itself to any attached drives – including portable storage plugged in via USB.

While the actual amount of machines deployed was pretty small, it's still bad PR for the company. They are trying to deflect some of that now, pointing the blame for the virus at an OEM based in China. According to Asustek, the virus was originally housed at a second-tier OEM that they used to manufacture the Eee Box units, and it was a problem with the OEM's QA that ultimately led to the virus being distributed. They also mentioned that the OEM might be dropped in the future, with work being sent to Foxconn instead.

They didn't mention the name of the OEM in question. Even if it was the fault of the OEM, Asustek is still ultimately responsible for what goes to market.

Following the announcement last month that SanDisk will attempt to revitalize physical music media by introducing their slotMusic MicroSD cards, the company has unveiled a sub-$20 Sansa MP3 player made specifically for the new album format.

As you can probably imagine, there are virtually no features to be found on the new player – no screen, no internal memory – so you just need to pop a slotMusic card into the microSD slot, plug the included headphones into the standard jack on the right edge, and hit play. Although it isn't stated explicitly, you can also use regular microSD cards to play your own DRM-free tunes.

The SanDisk Sansa slotMusic player will also be available in a variety of branded “bundles,” offering an album’s worth of songs plus extras on a 1GB SlotMusic card, for about $35. Personally, I’m a little curious to see how the cheap slotMusic player and cards do in the market, though I doubt they’ll make much of a dent on the music scene.

Samsung is already the world’s largest memory supplier and a major player in the US when it comes to home electronics, but the company has now set its sights on a new goal: breaking into the crowded US laptop market with low-priced “netbooks” as well as other thin and powerful models.

The company is introducing five notebooks priced between $1,049 and $2,499, which include ambiguously named X360 ultra portable (pictured above) that the company touts as being “lighter than Air and fully featured” – you can read the specs here. Starting in 2009, Samsung will partner with an as-yet undisclosed retailer, and begin offering its range of notebook and netbook systems in the US.

Whether or not Samsung succeeds remains to be seen, but the company will have to be on its toes if it wants to make a significant dent on the US laptop market, which is practically locked up by Dell, HP, Acer, Apple and Toshiba.

Intel is preparing to discontinue numerous dual-core and quad-core CPUs in the next few months, cutting back significantly on the portfolio of processors on the market. They initially were preparing to discontinue a handful of processors, and now the list has grown.

A total of at least 13 CPUs are scheduled for dismissal in this move, including both 65nm and 45nm parts. Discontinued CPUs will include dual core models from the E4600 all the way to the E8300, as well several quad-core models. The official notices is expected soon, at which time Intel will probably also reveal a roadmap for the CPUs that will succeed them.

10 strategic technologies for 2009 @ InfoWorld
World at War MULTIPLAYER BETA @ Call of Duty Headquarters
10 billion photos on Facebook @ Facebook
Guitar Pitch Bend with Wiimote @ YouTube
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New Internet speed record set

RSS is a very powerful web feed format that many of us have come to rely upon. While many think of it as a delivery system for news links, the concept of other types of media being delivered via RSS has been tossed around many times. Now, Flock, a browser based upon Firefox, will be incorporating Media RSS feeds into their browser. The browser itself can use RSS as a mechanism to deliver new images and video from a variety of sources, using the Media RSS standard. Media RSS has been used in other projects before, though not many, and Flock will be the first browser to do such.

The media integration doesn't stop at images and video. They also are coupling Facebook and MySpace integration, letting people easily “share” things they discover with people in their social networks. You can read the full press release after the jump.

This new use of RSS is different than Google's recent introduction of RSS feeds for search terms, but in the same category of expanding what RSS is. I like the ideas all around, and hope they get expanded further. It's easy to speculate that RSS or a similar technique could be used to deliver all content on the web.

Adobe today officially released the tenth version of its ubiquitous Flash player plug-in, bringing new “expressive features” for developers and a performance boost for users. The new version offers a number of improvements such as native support for 3D, a new text rendering engine, and integration with Adobe's Pixel Bender technology.

The company has also included a system where the stream will automatically adapt to bandwidth conditions, allowing for smoother video and audio playback. Adobe Labs has assembled several demos showing off the new features on its website, which you can check out here. Flash Player 10 is available now on all platforms, including Linux.

Sony has just released the latest firmware updates for its two flagship systems and both bring with them a number of useful additions. The PlayStation update’s biggest new features are a new power saving mode, Trophy enhancements, in-game screenshots, improved support for the official Bluetooth Headset and Flash 9 functionality meaning many flash-based video sites should now be functional.

Regarding the PSP, its biggest new feature is the PSP Store, enabling direct access to downloadable content from the handheld device. Sony has also added a full screen keyboard option for text entry and has redesigned the XMB background. Both firmware releases – version 2.5 for the PlayStation 3 and 5.00 for the PSP – are now available on the PlayStation Network.

Shortly after announcing that they were implementing a feature freeze on Firefox 3.1 for further bug squashing, Mozilla has announced that a beta version of the browser is available. Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is up for download now, letting people test drive the first major update to Firefox 3 since its milestone release a few months ago.

Though the beta is available, everyone should remember that beta software is just that – and may have unexpected bugs in it. Mozilla is encouraging anyone interested to use it and report any bugs back to Mozilla. The beta is available for all three platforms.

Although Joost was among first companies to offer broadcast-style video capabilities through the web, the service always suffered from a couple of major limitations: lack of unique, noteworthy content and the fact that users had to download a separate Joost player to watch videos, which is more than what a lot of people is willing to do.

The company had inadvertently worked itself into a strategic hole, whereas rival video sites such as YouTube.com and Hulu.com were thriving in terms of viewership. Now, taking a different approach, Joost has re-launched as a Flash-based video streaming service available to anyone with a web browser.

The revamped site now includes more than 46,000 professionally produced videos, including content from partners such as CBS, Sony Pictures, Viacom, Warner Bros and others. Looking to distinguish itself from Hulu.com, Joost is unsurprisingly focusing its efforts on enhancing the site's social networking features, hoping that users will be more engaged than at other video portals.

But while Joost’s revamp is perhaps a step in the right direction, it really doesn’t bring anything new to the table and the majority of its material can be found elsewhere on the web. I wonder if it’s too late for the once most promising Internet TV service or if Joost will manage to carve a niche for itself.

It was just last week that we heard about Asustek's plan to introduce touch screen Eee PCs in the near future. Apparently their manufacturing facilities are really on the ball, as the company has now launched the first such touch screen Eee model. It is an Eee PC desktop, intended to compete with the HP TouchSmart, coming in at a lower price point.

The desktop is somewhat weak on hardware, but not any weaker than you'd expect from an embedded PC system, with a 1.6GHz Atom, a gig of RAM and a 160GB HDD. The size of the HDD was likely chosen due to the limitations that Microsoft has in place for Windows XP on embedded systems. The initial version of the touch screen Eee will run Windows only – though Linux versions may be available soon.

The systems aren't immediately available, with the first batch coming out in late November, though there's no mention about whether or not Asustek had this planned.

Ubisoft today announced that the long awaited sequel to Far Cry has finally gone gold. This of course means that the development stage is completed, and the game is now ready for duplication in preparation for its launch on October 21.

Far Cry 2 runs on an all-new game engine and, like the original Far Cry, features non-scripted enemy AI and completely destructible environments. The game takes place in a war-torn, African state 50 square kilometers in size, where players will find themselves forced to make deals with corrupt warlords on both sides of the conflict in order to survive. Far Cry 2 will debut exclusively on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at $59.99 and also on the PC priced at a lower $49.99.