Great news we have here. All these while Apple holds the uniqueness to Thunderbolt, the 10Gbps I/O connector that’s said to be so fast we need spacesuits to use it. But now Apple fans are losing their uniqueness, as Intel’s Thunderbolt I/O port is coming to Windows!

If you’ll recall, Thunderbolt was actually built with Intel’s collaboration (Light Peak, anyone?), and sensibly, the chip giant is now making it possible for the port to appear on non-Mac machines.

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VMware has just announced Fusion 4, the latest version of its virtualization software, and, as you’d expect, it pledges to play nice with Apple’s newly minted OS. In addition to fully supporting Lion features like Spotlight, though, it makes Windows look more like, well, a Mac.

The software includes improved support for Expose and Spaces on the Windows side, and adds the ability to use Mission Control and launch Windows apps from Launchpad. Additionally, you can run Lion as a virtual machine within Snow Leopard and VMware makes vague claims about improved performance, 3D graphics and resource-hogging. It’ll cost $50 through the end of the year, with the price jumping up to $80 in January.

Fittingly enough, VMware picked up on the fact that Apple’s moving away from optical drives, and instead chose to ship the software with a USB drive (you can also download it and do the whole drag-and-drop installation thing). Oh, and if you bought the last-gen version of the software on July 20th or later, you’ll get the new version gratis.

Finally the curtains had been pulled and the rumors can be put out. HTC has officially announced its Sensation XE handset, replete with some upgraded specs and Beats Audio. Powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, this Android device features a 4.3-inch touchscreen with qHD (540 X 960) resolution and boasts a larger 1730mAh battery that promises prolonged run times.

As the first smartphone produced under HTC’s partnership with Beats Audio, this special edition Sensation also ships with a special pair of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, along with an 8GB or 16GB microSD card and remote control that allows users to flip through tracks of take calls without ever reaching inside their pockets.

Once these headphones are plugged in, the phone will automatically activate a Beats-optimized sound profile that, according to HTC, will deliver fuller bass, sharper vocals and broader range. The Sensation XE is slated to launch in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East sometime this month, though price and a possible North America launch date remain unclear.

Seems like we’ve heard this story before — Google buys a bunch of patents to protect its cute little green baby from all the big, bad patent lawsuits. Only this time, instead of buying a hardware manufacturer to expand its patent warchest, team Mountain View merely purchased 1,023 bits of IP from IBM. Covering everything from a method for filling holes in printed wiring boards to a method for file system management, Google seems to have grabbed quite the eclectic collection — one we’re sure Big G will put to work for itself and its buddies in no time. Those looking to see the full results of this latest patent shopping spree can hit the source link below. Right, we’re now waiting for ‘The Revenge of the Droids’!

SOURCE via Bloomberg

Players testing the Diablo 3 Friends and Family beta are claiming that Blizzard has found a way to remove the delay of character combat action stemming from network latency. In fact, players are claiming that nearly all combat actions are seemingly instantaneous — it’s as if they’re playing a local, single-player campaign. This is good news for players in Australia, New Zealand and other high-latency regions that don’t have access to localized servers.

According to the testers, Blizzard has developed a secure and tamper-proof method of client/server communication that allows the local client to handle its own calculations and send the data to the server for verification. Latency is eliminated because the client does not wait for the server to respond, but instead moves on as business as usual. However, the server inspects the data for tampering, and if it detects foul play, it will disconnect the player from the network.

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Tuesday during the Intel Developers Forum, newly-acquired and now wholly-owned subsidiary McAfee demonstrated DeepSAFE, a technology that allows McAfee to develop hardware-assisted security products to take advantage of a “deeper” security footprint.

According to the company, the tech resides underneath the computer’s operating system to gain better sight on deeply-rooted malware that typically embeds themselves outside the OS to evade current security solutions. McAfee DeepSAFE technology actually provides a direct view of system memory and processor activity that other solutions currently can’t access, and will expose the rootkit in real-time as it is trying to hide malware.

“McAfee DeepSAFE technology sits beyond the operating system (and close to the silicon) allowing McAfee products to have an additional vantage point in the computing stack to better protect systems,” the company said. “McAfee anticipates the McAfee DeepSAFE technology will be a foundation for a number of hardware-assisted security products that take advantage of a ‘deeper’ security footprint which will work in conjunction with McAfee Endpoint Security Platform that so many organizations trust to protect their endpoints and information.”

Todd Gebhart, co-president of McAfee, said that the new tech won’t be embedded directly on Intel’s processors, but will instead take advantage of hardware features already included in Intel’s current Core lineup and processors in the future. Consider the software as “hardware assisted” and optimized to run on Intel’s technology, using Intel VTx technology available on all Intel Core i3, i5, i7 processors and vPro platforms. Intel VTx technology is available for use by anyone.

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Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic estimates that Rovio’s Angry Birds is costing businesses around $1.5 billion in lost wages. The estimate is based on a recent report by AYTM claiming that the bird-flinging game is played for 200 million minutes per day. That essentially equals to 16 years of continuous game play every hour of every day.

According to the estimate, if 5-percent of those 200 million minutes are Americans playing Angry Birds at work, that’s around 43,333,333 on-the-clock hours of Angry Birds per year. Multiply that number by the hourly pay of America’s smartphone owners (a rather steep $35 average), then $1,516,666,667 worth of lost wages are lost due to the game. That’s more than the rumored valuation of Angry Birds developer Rovio which is estimated to be $1,200,000,000.

In addition to the total number of minutes played, AYTM’s report claims that, out of 1000 surveyed gamers, 32-percent feel somewhat relaxed when playing Angry Birds. 23-percent said that they felt “very” relaxed while 23-percent felt neither relaxed or anxious. 17-percent said they felt somewhat anxious while 6-percent felt very anxious.

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Subaru has unveiled its own version of Toyota’s FT-86 at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Called the BRZ Prologue, it was unveiled in a somewhat unfinished guise with a see-through body showing off the coupe’s internals. The company calls it the “SUBARU BRZ PROLOGUE – BOXER Sports Car Architecture II”

The BRZ features a rear-wheel-drive layout and is fitted with a normally-aspirated 2.0 liter Boxer engine which is exclusively developed for the coupe. The engine features a revised bore and stroke setting and also features Toyota’s direct injection and port injection technology which is commonly known as D-4S.

Subaru promises that the BRZ will offer “Pure Handling Delight” and confirmed that production is expected to start in spring 2012. Subaru also revealed the dimensions of the vehicle which includes a 2,570mm wheelbase. The vehicle is 4,200mm long, 1,770mm wide and 1,270mm high.