DotA Guide: Balanar - The Night Stalker Introduction

DotA is the most popular custom made map for Warcraft III. To deliver players a better understanding of this complex and sometimes complicated game here is a hero guide. Balanar is a strength hero that can be recruited at the Scourge Strength Tavern. Since 6.60, Icefrog started to buff this hero and make him a real killer during the night and a support hero during the day. Let's take a second and learn more about the roots of this cool hero: "Beware, you who wonder the night. Each step you take leads you deeper in the hideous reign of the horrible ruler of the dark. Balanar, elite dreadlord who brought the total darkness of the Nether into this world, haunts these regions. Your heart will pump harder, your legs will shake, and your mind...

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Official: Sony Buys Out Ericsson's Stake in Sony Ericsson

Speculations about the possible dissolve of the Sony Ericsson joint-venture have come and gone for years, but earlier this month sources close to the matter claimed that the move is imminent and scheduled for the end of the year. Today, both companies announced they have come to an agreement to make the Sony Ericsson brand a thing of the past. Ericsson and Sony Corporation has just announced that Sony will acquire Ericsson’s 50% stake in Sony Ericsson, which will wrest full control over the mobile phone business to Sony. Furthermore, the reasons behind Sony's decision to take full control over the Sony Ericsson brand is the almost lack of interest from its Swedish counterpart, as well as the negative impact that its entire Xperia lineup...

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Music and Entertainment on Nokia Lumia 800

Among the features that the new Nokia Lumia 800 will arrive on shelves with, we can count the entertainment options that Microsoft and Nokia packed with it.  Windows Phone already came to devices with appealing multimedia capabilities, yet Nokia felt that they were not enough, and included some features of its own with the new handset. Thus, those who will purchase the Nokia Lumia 800 will benefit from Nokia Music and Mix Radio, which will offer them access to millions of songs while on the go. Those who would like to learn some more info on the new features should have a look at the video embedded above, which details the Music and Entertainment features of Nokia Lumia 800. “With the best in mobile phone entertainment you get more than just click and play. You can create your own...

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AMD 28nm Radeon HD 7000 GPUs Entered Mass Production – Report

AMD is getting ready for the release of its next-generation Radeon HD 7000 graphics cards as reports suggest the company has already started mass production of these GPUs which are fabricated using TSMC advanced 28nm technology. The official launch of these chips is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2012, according to DigiTimes, the same source that revealed the graphics cores have entered mass production. If this report turns out to be true, then AMD won't be able to deliver on its promise of releasing the first Southern Islands parts by the end of this year. The main problem faced by the Sunnyvale-based chip maker seems to be TSMC's inability to improve the yields of its 28nm fabrication process. Furthermore, the foundry just...

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Nvidia Kepler GPUs to be Announced in December Says Report

Nvidia seems to be making great progress with its next-generation graphics cards based on the Kepler architecture as a recent report to make its appearance on the Web states that the chip maker is planning to announce these GPUs in December of this year. The DigiTimes report doesn't explain what it understands when it says “announce,” but most probably this means that Nvidia will showcase such a GPU at an event or press conference. Availability will most probably still remain scheduled for 2012, just as various Nvidia representatives, have said over the time. Before Kepler arrives the GPU maker is expected to release a series of die shrinks of Fermi built using TSMC's 28nm fabrication process. The first chips based on the Kepler architecture...

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Kingston Again Releases Flash Drives, DataTraveler 109

Kingston has exercised its ability to not be surprising at all by once again coming forth and launching a DataTraveler flash drive, or two of them in this case.  Not that releasing a new device of this sort is a bad thing to do, but Kingston does tend to launch DataTraveler drives on a fairly regular basis, bordering on tradition at this point. The two it now revealed are called DataTraveler 109 and have capacities of 8 GB and 16 GB. In that order, they are selling at 7 Euro and 17 Euro, which more or less translate to $9.82 and 23.86 Euro, respectively. “Kingston's DataTraveler 109 is a fashionable USB Flash drive that makes it fun to connect and share photos, music, videos and more with friends and family,” said Krystian Jaroszynski,...

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Gigabyte Outs Mini-ITX FM1 Motherboard for AMD Llano APUs

Gigabyte has quite an extensive range of FM1 motherboards available for users interested in building an AMD Llano-powered platform, but the Taiwanese company has recently added another such solution to its portfolio, the mini-ITX A75N-USB 3.0. The motherboard is built on the same A75 Fusion controller hub (FCH) as it larger ATX or mATX brothers and it packs a complete set of features, including a PCI Express x16 expansion slots. This is placed right near the board's left edge and should be able to come as a great alternative to the integrated graphics for those of you wanting to build a highly-portable gaming rig. AMD's Hudson D3 chipset is located right above the CPU socket and Gigabyte's engineers have connected to it four SATA 6Gbps ports...

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Try Out the New Nokia City Scene for Nokia N9

Nokia N9, the first and only MeeGo-based smartphone from Nokia, comes to the market with a great design, and should be able to offer an appealing experience to its users courtesy of the various applications that developers have already built for it.  Among them, we can also count software that comes from Nokia themselves, including the new Nokia City Scene, which was just made available from the Nokia Research Center. With the new app, users will find it easy to explore the city through the small smartphone in their hands. They can click on buildings to learn more on the stores and services available in them, and can also perform searches to find what they are looking for much easier that before. “We combine Navteq drive imagery, 3D...

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Porsche Design BlackBerry P’9981 Goes Official, Priced at $2000 (1425 EUR)

As we reported last week, Porsche Design and Research in Motion teamed up to release a co-branded product rumored to be a luxury adaptation of the Bold 9900. It looks like the device has just been announced during their common launch event held at Burj Khaleefa, Dubai. Dubbed BlackBerry P’9981, the luxury smartphone is built on Bold 9900's popularity, but using premium materials. In this regard, the handset's front part is made of stainless steel (keypad included), while the back is completely covered with leather. Porsche Design P’9981 runs a customized version of BlackBerry 7 operating system that includes an exclusive user interface, as well as special themes, ringtones and wallpapers. Furthermore, the phone comes with a Porsche font...

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Inno3D Prepares Custom GeForce GTX 570 Jericho Graphics Card

It's been quite some time since we last heard of Inno3D, but we just got word that the company is now preparing to launch a new graphics card based on the Nvidia GTX 570 design which was paired together with an in-house developed cooling solution. The new graphics card will be known as the GTX 570 Jericho and it relies on a single 92mm fan and on a massive aluminum haetsink with five heatpieps in order to dissipate the heat produced when running. This fan is PWM controlled and its speed can range from 1,000RPM to 4,200RPM depending on the temperatures recorded by the graphics core, and can also cope with the heat generated by an overclocked GTX 570. According to Inno3D, noise also shouldn't be a problem as the Jericho cooler has an idle...

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Fix Windows 7 SP1 ‘Error 633’ and Failed Dial-up Connections

Customers running Windows 7 RTM and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) can have issues establishing a dial-up connection after they wake their computers from sleep or hibernation.  Microsoft has officially confirmed the issue, and published KB 2618301, offering additional details to users impacted by this problem. According to the software giant, in addition to Windows 7 RTM and SP1, Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM and SP1 are also affected. Here is how Microsoft describes the symptoms encountered by customers: “When you resume a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 from sleep or from hibernation, you cannot establish a dial-up connection through a modem. Additionally, you may receive the following error message:...

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Asus Transformer Prime Kal-El Tablet Gets Pictured in Detail

Showcased for the first time at the AsiaD conference just a couple of days ago, the Transformer Prime tablet powered by Nvidia's Kal-El quad-core SoC has now starred in a new series of pictures that give us a better look at Asus' creation. The images were posted on a Chinese website, which was removed by now, but fortunately Notebook Italia managed to save a copy before the page went offline. This new set of pictures show us in greater detail the keyboard dock used for the Transformer Prime as well as its new look that reminds us of Asus' recently launched Zenbook laptops. Just like in the case of Asus' Ultrabooks, the 10.1-inch Transformer Prime also features a slim profile (this time it measures just 8.3mm) and comes equipped with WiFi...

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