Tech Olive

Epic Vid of the Week is a new weekly series that showcases an awesome video that we or our readers discover. Some you may have seen before and others you may have not. If you’ve discovered any videos that are worthy of an Epic Vid of the Week title, let us know!

If you’re the kind of person who has to be up on all the latest internet trends, then you’ve most definitely heard of Chatroulette, which is a web service that lets you video chat with a random stranger and when you’re bored with them, you can move onto another random stranger, very similar to Omegle.

This week’s Epic Vid comes from a very interesting, yet comical pianist who improvises songs based on who he’s randomly chatting with. Quite entertaining:

At MIX10, Microsoft unveiled details of their ninth version of Internet Explorer. It’s only been in development for three weeks, so what Microsoft demoed was an extremely early IE9 build, but we got a sneak peek at HTML5 support, but Microsoft seems hesitant at the moment until HTML5 is actually a go. Their new Javascript engine seems to be catching up to Chrome and Firefox speed-wise, but still has yet to beat them. Improved CSS support will also be a focus, as well as hardware acceleration, which will use DirectX and the GPU to improve graphic and AJAX rendering.

It looks like Microsoft is finally stepping up to the plate with their browser. It’s still to early to tell if IE9 will be a contender and Microsoft hasn’t said anything about availability, but you can download a platform preview of IE9 here.

via [Download Squad]

UPDATE: In a Q&A session following the keynote, Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the IE team, has said that IE9 will not be supported in Windows XP.

Good news for all you lefties out there. Razer feels your pain and is making an effort to do something about it. With the announcement of a new left-handed DeathAdder, Razer is also hosting an awesome giveaway for anyone wanting to win a free Razer mouse….which is pretty much everyone.

The Leftist Movement is upon us. For too long, the lefties have been overlooked and tossed aside. We were the first to support left handed gamers with our ambidextrous design but to some, it wasn’t enough. “What about us palm players?” they would ask, gesturing wildly with their left hand, “Why must we share our mice with the righties?”

Behold my south pawed friends, the Razer DeathAdder Left Hand Edition. All the legendary DeathAdder performance that was once exclusive to the righties is now yours, contoured specifically to fit your dominant appendage. Rejoice; your day has finally come.

Head over to Razer’s announcement page for details on how you can enter to win what is quite possibly the best left-handed mouse on the planet. Be sure to keep an eye on our hardware review in the future while we try to get our very own Editor-in-Chief’s dominant left hand on one of these bad boys for a review.

Steam’s mid-week madness deal this week features Dragon Age: Origins. For $33.49 (from $49.99) you can buy the standard edition or for $43.54 (from $64.99) you can buy the deluxe edition.

Today, Kingston announced a new addition to their HyperX lineup. The new dual-channel DDR3 kit is clocked at a crazy cool 2400MHz and has been Intel XMP certified for the Core i7. The kit sports 9-11-9-27-2 timings at 1.65 volts and will be available sometime in Q2 of this year.



[Press Release]

Bethesda has recently announced their newest publishing project. Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is being developed by InXile Entertainment and is planned for release on the Xbox 360, PC and PS3 with no set release date. The entire game is supposedly designed around co-op play, so expect something like L4D2 or Army of Two meets Oblivion. Head over to VGChartz for a large breakdown and interview with the developers for more info on the game itself. Check out some screenshots below.

While this isn’t a surprise of any kind because Google is always improving their services, yesterday during a Gmail panel at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Google team member Jonathan Perlow asked the audience if they think that Gmail is slow. Many raised their hands to signify a good ole ‘yes’ and proceeded to reassure everyone by saying, “we are fixing it.” While this gives us absolutely know details whatsoever, it’s nice to know that Google is on our side. For those that are experiencing a slo-mo version of Gmail, help is certainly on the way.

via [TechCrunch]

Just a friendly reminder, folks. Be ready.

After we realized that we have a ton of cool stuff just sitting around and collecting dust, we decided to get rid of it the easy way by giving it away to our loyal readers. This cool stuff ranges from stickers to gaming headsets to case fans to gaming mouse pads and more. Some items are brand new in the box, while others have been opened up for review purposes.

Here’s the deal, we’ll be giving away one item through Twitter every Monday at 6:00PM EST until we run out of stuff to giveaway. We’ll ask a trivia question and the first person to reply to us with the correct answer will be the winner for that week. Sound simple? It is, so be sure to follow us on Twitter for your chance to get some cool, free stuff!

A few rules:

- You can only win one time (to keep it fair).
- You must be a resident of the United States (sorry, foreigners).
- Winners will be notified via DM in Twitter. They must respond before the next week’s giveaway or else they will forfeit their win.

Image Credit: c.j.b

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature on Tech Olive that helps gamers in the tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

So, what does the almighty Bargain Bin have for you this week? It’s a delightfully casual and humorous strategy game from the makers of Peggle. If the mention of “casual” has you ready to stop reading, allow me to offer you this incentive: the game includes zombies. Know the game yet? Follow the break to find out.

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The past week’s best news…

The Bargain Bin: Penumbra Black Plague
- In such economic turmoil, who will you turn to for the best cheap games? Well, Tech Olive’s Bargain Bin, of course. Every week, we’ll pick a nice game for under $10 that you should check out. This week, we’ve got a horror title: Penumbra Black Plague; the newest game in the Penumbra series for the paltry sum of $4.97 (with shipping, my total was about $8)…
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