Thought Thunderbolt was the only super-fast interconnect in town? Well, it is and will be for a little while yet, but the PCI Special Interest Group has just held its annual meeting and developer conference in California, where plans for a 32Gbps PCIe cable were revealed.

Details are still fluid on precisely what such a connector would look like and do, but the expectation is that it’ll be built out of copper wire, will be flatter and thinner than Thunderbolt’s rotund construction, and will be able to channel power as well as data through to devices up to 10 feet (3m) away.

Targeting consumer applications, and extra skinny tablets and laptops in particular, this cabled variety of PCI Express will start off based on the 3.0 spec in 2013, but will then move on from there to PCI Express 4.0 and, potentially, optical data conveyance.

By the way, PCI-Express 4.0 also got announced by the PCI SIG, though that’s at least four years away at this point — no need to sweat about having it in your next motherboard, not yet anyway.

We’re just days away from the start of the new series of Top Gear, and we’re all excited to see what Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have in store for us this summer. Last week we brought you the first teaser commercial, and now the BBC has released a second to tantalize us with what’s to come.

So what have we learned? James will be showing us the new Aston Martin Virage, the McLaren MP4-12C which Jezza was driving is pitted against the Ferrari 458 Italia, the BMW 8-Series is up against the Mercedes-Benz CL, a Chevrolet Corvette is for cowboys, and Richard really appears to like the Fiat Abarth 500C. Follow the jump to watch the brief 30-second video for yourself.

It’s been a long wait for the successor of the N900, and finally the N950 is here! Nerdy derps rejoice! Despite years of leaks and an inestimable amount of visions tip-toeing around in our brains, we never could nail down a solid image of the thing. Until today that is. Engadget has spotted a hidden Area 51 within Nokia that contains all those PR photos of the N950. Check ‘em out!

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Peter Ronchetti is the general manager of Legoland in California. He drives a Volvo XC60, but the Legoland staff decided he should jump up to the XC90. Seeing as the Legoland staff is rather skilled at turning interlocking plastic bricks into art, they decided to give Ronchetti a full-size Volvo. Sort of… The result is one amazing, and lighthearted, prank. See the team’s hard work by watching the clip posted after the jump.

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Fansite ArkhamCity.co.uk has spotted the first bit of artwork for Robin in Batman: Arkham City. For now, Robin is only available as a Best Buy pre-order bonus in the US. Hopefully we’ll see him make his way over the pond at some point, or become available to all as DLC after launch. He’ll be playable in all of Arkham City’s challenge maps, and will get two unique ones of his own, called Black Mask Hideout and Freight Train Escape. Robin will fight with his own set of gadgets and will have a different move-set to Batman and Catwoman.

Rocksteady have gone as far away as possible from the classic red, green and yellow outfit by making him completely monochrome. Those hoping for a camper version of the boy wonder will be pleased to know there’s a red version of the outfit included with the pack. Arkham City is out on October 18 in the US and October 21 internationally.

Crysis 2 is said to get a DirectX 11 update very soon from Crytek, thought I do think it’s rather late. Apparently a post at MyCrisis was taken down, but members of PC Gamer forum managed to grab the screenshots and the details of this new update pack. Read more…

After months of waiting with gadget lust throbbing through our veins, the successor to the wildly popular Galaxy S, the Samsung Galaxy S II has finally made its way to our shores. With online review sites singing songs of praise about the Galaxy S II, it’s no surprise that the following for the phone would be as fervent as it was.

The Galaxy S II went on sale yesterday afternoon at a discounted price of RM799 with a Value Plus Plan and 3GB data plan for the first 300 customers at around 3pm and the first person in line arrived the night before at midnight. Reminiscent of the iPad 2 queue earlier this year, the queue snaked around the Mid Valley Megamall’s Centre Court drawing stares from curious onlookers all day.

Available first to Maxis customers, the Samsung Galaxy S II is at the forefront of mobile phone technology, possibly being one of the most coveted Android-powered handsets on the market today. Powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, the Samsung Galaxy S II is snappy to the touch and with the HSPA+ connectivity, it will support speeds of up to 21Mbps down when carriers get that fast (Maxis says it’s going to implement 21Mbps HSPA+ in Johor next year). Read more…

HTC organized a rather lavish launch party on Tuesday night to launch three new phones in our country. The three new phones are the mighty Sensation, and the two Facebook phones Salsa and ChaCha.

Crafted in a solid aluminium unibody style, the HTC Sensation sits right at the top of the roost, undoubtedly one of the handsets in their “premium” segment. The Sensation sports a 4.3Inch qHD display that gives high-resolution widescreen viewing that will make multimedia tasks a pleasure. Powered by a 1.2GHz dual core processor, and 768MB RAM, the Sensation will be up to heavy usage like recurring and playing back 1080p video on its 8MP camera.

The HTC Sensation will be available for RM 2,299 before subsidies. Of course, DiGi and Maxis also carries this phone with a subsidized data plan package.

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