A new major Chinese event, the World e-Sports Masters, is due to take place from October 26th to November 2nd in Hangzhou, China. The competition features Counter-Strike 1.6 as well as a quintessential Asian RTS, Warcraft III.

The tournaments will feature congruent formats where the first three days consist of an eight team group stage to determine the top two teams or players for each of two groups.

The second half of the event pits the top four teams/players in each discipline against each other in a single-elimination best-of-three bracket play which includes a third place run-off match.

Good news for those of you with abnormal sleeping habits, the action kicks off at 6:00am EST/3:00am PST

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[Via GotFrag]

  

Maingear is proud to announce the release of our very own 24/7 Dust 2, HLSTATSX Ranked Counter-Strike: Source Server Hosted in Texas !



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With every Maingear Server we are proud to implement HLSTATSX; A one of a kind ranking technology which keeps track of every players specific kill, death, bomb plants, defuses, and even the exact number of kills with each weapon.






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All of our Counter-Strike: Source servers run at 100 tick and 1000FPS thanks to Quantum Servers!

Get your server for a low price at www.quantum-servers.com and use coupon code MAINGEAR for 10% off final price!






  

People have been asking after the collector's edition since the release date for Wrath of the Lich King broke last night. Blizzard has just updated their official site, confirming the November 13 release date and letting us know that there will be a CE (shock!), and what will be in it.


* World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King on DVD-ROM.

* The Art of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, a 208-page book featuring never-before-seen images from the game.

* An exclusive in-game pet: Frosty, the baby frost wyrm.

* A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, the Wrath of the Lich King intro cinematic with director’s commentary, and more.

* The official soundtrack CD, containing 21 epic tracks from the game, along with exclusive bonus tracks.

* A mouse pad featuring a map of the newly opened continent of Northrend.

* Two World of Warcraft Trading Card Game March of the Legion™ starter decks, along with two exclusive cards available only in the Collector’s Edition.





This is more or less the same pack-in list as the BC CE had. The pricing will be $70 for the CE, as opposed to $40 for the regular edition (same as for BC, as far as I remember). Will you be buying the collector's edition?

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[Via WoWinsider]

  

The gHacks blog points us to a dark blue, modern-looking "Embedded" theme for Windows XP, designed and signed by Microsoft. That means no file hacking—just install the package and switch your theme in your desktop preferences. Here are two direct download links . To use other, non-signed themes, check out the guide to using custom visual styles in XP and Vista.



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[Via LifeHacker]


  

Over 200 of America's best video gamers will be invited to the Los Angeles Convention Center this weekend to battle it out at the World Cyber Games USA 2008 National Final. There will be many prizes, including cold hard cash, but twenty-five lucky gold and silver finalists will earn roster spots on gaming's own Team USA, and have the opportunity to compete with the world's best at the World Cyber Games 2008 Grand Final in Cologne, Germany. Little known fact, I actually held, at one point, the second highest score in the world at the game Air Zonk for the TurboGrafx 16. If you don't believe me, check out issue #45 of EGM (if you still have it) and flip to the back where they use to do those score contests. Anyway, full release with details after the jump!



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[Via Kotaku]

  

Intel's New Solid State Drive - Video Review
Solid State Drives, or SSDs, are nothing new. They have been around for a good while now and companies like OCZ have been selling them across many different models. But the fact of the matter is that the downsides have far outweighed the upsides, particularly when it comes to drive speed. Enter Intel. Intel is not known to lollygag when it comes to products and its R&D, and earlier this month Intel threw its own hat into the SSD ring. The Intel SSD we are looking at here today is the X25-M model.

As noted above, we were not fully satisfied with the reviews we had read covering the X25-M so we decided to apply our own brand of hard drive justice to the SSD and a few other traditional platter based hard drives. We purchased a stop watch and got out our 5-disk RAID0 array enclosure that would write at over 230MB/s and put it to work on our Intel X25-M and our comparison drives.


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Want more? read up & discuss at Hard|OCP!

[Via Hardocp ]

  

There’s a new energy coming from the people of AMD. It’s the power of Fusion. Fusion is how AMD marries innovation with collaboration. Far more than just the convergence of the CPU and graphics processing, Fusion is how AMD and its partners enable next-generation technologies that change our lives.

Fusion is the process where customer needs, dreams, and desires bond with AMD’s own passion for engineering. It is Fusion that fuels this collaborative process and unleashes innovation on an exponential scale.

Looking back, Fusion has enabled AMD to lead the industry with a legacy of breakthroughs. We were the first to achieve speeds of one billion clock cycles per second. The first to integrate standard 32- and 64-bit computing architectures. And the first to shatter the teraflop-in-a-box performance ceiling. And more.

Today, Fusion is the catalyst for AMD’s accelerated computing model, harnessing the power of specialized hardware to help boost performance and enhance energy and cost efficiencies. It is a force that’s already changing the way we work, live, and play.

Download the AMD Fusion Gaming Utility here.
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[Via AMD Fusion]

  

Google announced their very own browser project called Google Chrome — an announcement in the form of a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud, no less. Google says Google Chrome will be open source, include a new JavaScript virtual machine, include the Google Gears add-on by default, and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), among other things. I've also uploaded Google's comic book with all the details (details given from Google's perspective, anyway... let's see how this holds up). You can download the beta here www.google.com/chrome.


   
      



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[Via Slashdot & Gizmodo]

  

The leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, SteelSeries, today announced the release of the SteelSeries Siberia Full-size Headset in Pink. The Pink Siberia headset was designed for today's growing female gamer contingent and will be used by the women's team previously known as Les Seules, now a part of the leading E-Sports organization, Meet Your Makers.

The SteelSeries iron.lady Siberia Full-size Headset was developed in cooperation with professional gamers to ensure that the soundscape, specifications and comfort is suitable for long gaming sessions. The headset is also designed for multi-functionality. Apart from using the headset for PC-gaming, this product has been designed so gamers can use it with their favorite MP3-player, handheld gaming device or practically any other kind of portable digital device.

“Female gamers are having a significant impact on the gaming industry and are influencing how we design our products," said Bruce Hawver, CEO of SteelSeries. “We're excited to introduce our professional gaming products to the growing female audience and players. Whether they chose to use our signature black and white products or chose to distinguish themselves with pink, gamers know that SteelSeries designs the best tools to compete with to win."

The SteelSeries iron.lady Siberia Full-size Headset, with an MSRP of 64.99 EUR, will be shipped in Q4 2008 and will be available from www.SteelSeries.com, NewEgg.com, Amazon.com and other resellers.
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Check out SteelSeries line of high performance gaming products here!

[Via SteelSeries]

  

Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world. With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience

Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment. For those of you who have seen the videos or tried our tech preview, you could experience synths that we made in the lab and get a feel for what Photosynth is and how it works. But now, for the first time ever you can create synths from your own pictures and share them with your friends. Explore great synths from others or create a few of your own.



Because Photosynth is so new, you will probably run into an occasional bug or hiccup. Whether you have a brilliant idea or find a bug, please let them know. We’ll do our best to address them.

And be sure to keep watching this space, where we’ll share what we’ve learned about making great synths, talk with some members of the Photosynth team, provide synthing suggestions for advanced users and point you to some of the cooler synths that people are building.

Former New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath once said “When you have fun, you can do amazing things.” We sure hope you have as much fun using Photosynth as we’ve had building it.

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Sign up today and get your hands on experience with Photosynth today. click here!

[Via Microsoft Photosynth]