Neverwinter Nights 2 had a bit of a rocky start, finally getting up to steam with the first expansion pack, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. Now Atari and Wizards of the Coast have announced work on a second expansion, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir. The new expansion promises to take us back to the more pleasant Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale days, bringing back full party customization, dungeon crawling, and free-exploration via overland map rather than set points. I just shivered with glee.

The expansion also introduces a trade mechanic, allowing players to build their own legitimate trade empire or stick to the shadows, stealing from the rich and selling on the black market.

It almost sounds like a whole new game, rather than an expansion pack. The ability to customize your party and explore the Sword Coast and Samarach over open land basically changes Neverwinter Nights completely, effectively making it more akin to an updated, multiplayer, moddable Baldur's Gate. There go those shivers again.

AMD tried to pull a fast one and is showing off an unmarked ASUS notebook running an Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 at their booth. Why? Because it has the Radeon HD3850 X2. They have removed all stickers on the notebook itself, which has been placed on a desk in front of other AMD based systems. We opened up 3DMark06 when no one was looking and it rreveals the Intel CPU. I guess AMD could not get a notebook with their own chipset in combination with the new high-end mobile GPU in time for the show.

A week ahead of its release date, NVIDIA's next generation flagman the GeForce GTX 280 1GB is already starting to appear on various European etailers. Both the French TDShop.fr and the German HW ELEKTRONIK are now offering the card for roughly 590 Euro ($912). I sincerely hope the price will drop after the cards are out.

Even though it has not been announced officially yet by NVIDIA, ELSA has been showing a card at their Computex booth that is labeled as GeForce 9800 GT.

Google is inviting Gmail users in the US and UK to participate in the testing of Gmail Labs. Launched today, the latest Google service brings a list of experimental new features that will eventually become part of Gmail. Gmail Labs is available now through the Settings/Labs page of your Gmail box.

The result of this loosely-directed chaos is 13 Labs features, with more on the way. Some of them we've found really useful, like Quick Links, which lets you save searches and any other views in Gmail. Kai and Julie wrote Superstars, which gives you different types of stars. Dave wrote Old Snakey, which lets you play an old school style computer game when you press "&". I'm just going to go out and say it: Old Snakey is probably a bad idea. But Dave wanted to do it, so Dave did it and anyone who uses Gmail can use it. And now you can help decide whether it's a good idea. That's the kind of thing that makes a project fun to work on.

- Introducing Gmail Labs

The Denube Gaming Machine Concept is basically four computers in one case, powered by a single power supply.

It is targeted at people that often have friends coming in for small-scale LAN parties. Also it would allow cost, size and power efficient installations for bigger Internet Cafes.


At this time it is still a prototype while FOXCONN evaluates the demand for for this kind of product. For example the Ethernet switch you see on the bottom will be integrated into the case as well.