Microsoft announced Thursday that it plans to lower the retail prices for several flavors of Windows Vista.

For those in the U.S., Microsoft is cutting prices only on the higher-end versions of Vista, and only for the upgrade version used to move from XP or another copy of Vista. The suggested price for Vista Ultimate drops to $219 from $299, while Home Premium falls to $129, from $159. Continue Reading

Trying to break into the video game industry? If you are a gamer my advice is get involved with the Microsoft Playtest group. You will be helping your gaming future by attending the Playtest group and your fellow gamers. It may not be exactly the future you hoped for, but it can help you gain contacts within the industry.

 You may be periodically contacted my Microsoft to participate in a test. When Microsoft contacts you, you are asked a series of question to see if you qualify for the upcoming study or test. Based on your answers you may or may not be selected for the particular test. Continue Reading

Starting Feb. 17, 2009 the U.S. Analog TV broadcasting will be gone for good. Meaning that if you don’t have a digital TV, or a DTV Converter Box your current TV will be pretty much useless. For those of you that are or will be signed up with cable or satellite service, the current set top box should accommodate the DTV Transition. For the few that don’t subscribe to cable or satellite service and are happy watching only the local channels, TV will come to a screeching halt.

(The FCC has mandated that cable carriers must support analog TV sets until at least 2012) Continue Reading

In this season of giving, Blockbuster is giving themselves a 40 percent raise. For those of us that are signed up for Blockbuster’s mail order DVD service, they send you 3 then you can exchange them for movies at your local Blockbuster; we are in for a big rate hike.

The 40 percent rate increase is quite unbelievable, but this rate hike was inevitable being that Blockbuster lost $37.8 million in the third quarter of 2007. Continue Reading

If you are anything like myself, you have about fifty passwords that you try to remember, and countless sticky notes plastered all over your workstation. Well, thanks to a little program called RoboForm you can finally toss those post-it notes out and put your mind at ease. RoboForm is an award-winning automated password manager and web form filler. Here at GVG we are always looking for cool things to simplify our lives, and RoboForm does exactly that. Continue Reading

ESPN signs a deal which will enable them to provide full length games and TV shows for your Xbox 360.

ESPN will be offering full-length NCAA football, basketball games, Summer X Games 13, and episodes of such ESPN shows as World Series of Poker, The Contender and Madden Nation. These are just a few of the selections available through your Xbox Live Marketplace, and all thanks to ESPN. Continue Reading

 The search engine giant will, without a doubt, cause a stir in the mobile phone market with this new service. Google has announced today that they are developing a free cell phone software package. Google’s software could possibly be a direct threat to the Microsoft Corporation, being that they presently have the number one mobile operating system available to the public.

Google does not plan to make the phones themselves. Google also will not be branding the phones with their logo; instead they will be working with four different cell phone manufacturers that have agreed to deploy Google’s program into their phones. This announcement has ended the speculation pertaining to the Mountain View-based company’s cellular ambitions. These Google software packed phones won’t be on the market until around late 2008. The engineers have been busy working on this software for the past three years. This dates back to the Silicon Valley startup called Andriod Inc. that Google acquired in 2005. The mobile software still bears the Android name in acknowledgment of its heritage. Continue Reading

We all hate losing our gadgets, and we get really mad if our gadgets happen to be stolen right? Well the folks over at Gadget Trak claim to have a solution. They say that they can track your stolen or misplaced iPod, digital camera or any gadget that plugs into your computer via a USB port. They say that you install an application to the root of any usb powered gadget (once you register with them.) Then if you should ever lose your gadget, you simply go to the Gadget Theft site and flag the gadget as missing. Then if and when the next time the gadget is plugged into a USB port, you will get an email with the information that can help you and the police in obtaining your lost or stolen gadget back. Continue Reading

I’ve been using a BlackBerry for several years now, and while I love the device itself, without BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) it seems that the device has a bit too many limitations in regards to syncing data across multiple applications.

Yesterday however, the folks over at Google (Gmail in particular) announced that they are releasing IMAP for cell phones and other devices, and IMAP in general. Basically, what this means is that now you’ll be able to make changes to your emails in your BlackBerry or cell phone, on the web, and on your email client (such as Outlook). But the best part of the whole deal (aside from it being free) is that you’ll be able to see those changes reflected across all of the applications. Continue Reading