Intel Corporation announced a collaboration with Facebook to define the next generation of rack technologies used to power the world's largest data centers. As part of the collaboration, the companies also unveiled a mechanical prototype built by Quanta Computer* that includes Intel's new, innovative photonic rack architecture to show the total cost, design and reliability improvement potential of a disaggregated rack environment.

"Intel and Facebook are collaborating on a new disaggregated, rack-scale server architecture that enables independent upgrading of compute, network and storage subsystems that will define the future of mega-datacenter designs for the next decade," said Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer during his keynote address at Open Computer Summit in Santa Clara, Calif. "The disaggregated rack architecture includes Intel's new photonic architecture, based on high-bandwidth, 100 Gbps Intel Silicon Photonics Technology, that enables fewer cables, increased bandwidth, farther reach and extreme power efficiency compared to today's copper based interconnects."

Enthusiast PC casing and PSU maker Fractal Design joined minds with us to announce the year's first TechPowerUp Facebook Giveaway. Up for grabs are some cool Fractal Design hardware, including a Fractal Design Define XL R2 Black Pearl case, Fractal Design Newton R3 800W power supply, and a Fractal Design Adjust 108 fan controller. The giveaway needs you to do nothing more than to Like our Facebook page (if you haven't already), and fill up a simple form (or make Facebook do that for you), to partake.For more information, and to participate, visit this page.

Also Announcing the Winners of Our Tt eSports Giveaway

Tt eSports and TechPowerUp partner to bring you the newest Facebook giveaway, which doesn't require you to do odd things to win some rad free gear. All you really have to do is "Like" our Facebook page (if you haven't already), and fill up a short form (or make Facebook do it for you), and at the end of the giveaway (on December 24), your name could be randomly chosen to win one of two Tt eSports Level 10 M gaming mice (matte-black and camo-green).Sounds good? Head over to the Giveaway page.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, today announced the 'Ultimate OverClockers Dream Xmas Giveaway', a competition hosted on Facebook in conjunction with KINGPIN Cooling and G.SKILL memory.

Running from December 13th to 27th 2012, the 'Ultimate OverClockers Dream Xmas Giveaway' is a prize draw open to all Facebook users. Participation couldn't be easier; simply 'Like' the GIGABYTE, KINGPIN and G.SKILL Facebook fanpages, share the event with your friends, and you could win a range of prizes including a GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H motherboard.

Announcing this week's Facebook Giveaway, in partnership with the fine craftsmen at BitFenix. We are giving away an awesome new BitFenix Ghost ATX mid-tower, two BitFenix Prodigy Fire Red and Atomic Orange cases (one each), and one each of BitFenix Recon Black and Recon White internet-enabled fan-controllers. Sounds good? All you have to do is fill up a tiny little form on Facebook (or make Facebook fill it for you), to stand a chance to win one of these.Edit: One of our fans made a YouTube trailer for this contest: TechPowerUp - BitFenix Giveaway Pretty nice!

For more information, and to participate, visit our BitFenix Facebook Giveaway page.

Also Announcing the Winners of Noctua and TechPowerUp Giveaway

To brighten up your otherwise slow Monday morning, TechPowerUp and Noctua bring you a chance to win one of three high-performance Noctua CPU coolers, including some of its most iconic models in recent times: NH-D14, NH-C14, and NH-L12. All you have to do is "Like" our Facebook page, fill up a short form (or make Facebook do that for you), to stand a chance. The giveaway is open from today (19/11) to the following Monday (26/11). Three winners will be randomly picked from the entries, one each for the three prizes up for grabs. The NH-D14 is Noctua's flagship dual-tower cooler, the NH-C14, is a category-defining high-performance top-flow C-type cooler, and the NH-L12 built quite the reputation as a low-profile performance heatsink. Good hunting!For more details, and to participate, visit this page.

Do you like TechPowerUp? Then you're going to love the awesome new Giveaway we have planned with NZXT. We are giving away some of NZXT's hottest hardware, including a Crafted Series Phantom 820 case, a HALE82 750W modular power supply, and HAVIK 140 dual-fan CPU cooler. All you have to do to participate is "Like" TechPowerUp's page on Facebook, and feed in your name and e-mail address for us to contact. The giveaway is open to all, and will run for 14 days (till 20/11/2012). A winner will be picked by random, and announced in the week of 30/11/2012.For more information, and to participate, visit this page

NVIDIA is giving away keys to play test Crysis 3 Alpha multiplayer (pre-beta). All you have to do is like the giveaway page on Facebook, fill up a form (or make Facebook do that), and get your key, which can be redeemed on EA Origin. There are a limited number of keys, so hurry!Get your key here!

Facebook, Inc. today reported financial results for the third quarter, which ended September 30, 2012.

"As proud as I am that a billion people use Facebook each month, I'm also really happy that over 600 million people now share and connect on Facebook every month using mobile devices," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform. At the same time, we are deeply integrating monetization into our product teams in order to build a stronger, more valuable company."

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of security and threat management solutions, today announced a partnership with Facebook, with the goal of enhancing the security of social networking both online and offline. Kaspersky Lab is now supplying Facebook with up-to-the-minute data about the latest malicious software threats worldwide, which will be used to protect Facebook users from inadvertently visiting malicious web pages.

People are more likely to click on a link shared by a friend, and this inherent trust is something cyber-criminals prey upon. Malicious URLs can automatically share themselves with a victim's personal contacts without the user's knowledge, making the links appear legitimate. Now, when Facebook users share or click a link shared by their friends, the link will instantly be compared against Kaspersky Lab's database of malicious web pages. If the link matches Facebook's list of known 'bad' URLs - which are supplied to Facebook by Kaspersky Lab and other security vendors - the user will be immediately notified and blocked from visiting the web page. This not only prevents the user's personal information and computer from being put at risk, but stops the malicious links from spreading further.

Hightech Information System (HIS) today introduces HIS 7970 X. The card is not only of HIS top class but is also the best of the best among 7970 cards. The 4-way crossfire HIS 7970 X achieved the number 1 world records on both 3dMark Vantage and 3Dmark 11 with 84669 and 29937 marks respectively. The card also won the ASRock Z77 Overclocking Competition on 3Dmark.com

HIS 7970 X is overflown with special features such as X elements, IceQ X², iTurbo, PowerTune with Boost, OC equipment and more. The card carries the special X elements, including the extra 18+1+1 PWM phrases, LED indicators, outputs that support both Eyefinity 5 & Eyefinity 6, making HIS 7970 X one of the most luxurious cards in the market.

Gateway today debuts its new Gateway NE Series line of notebooks in Canada. The new Gateway NE notebook line delivers the ultimate blend of essential performance, popular features and great extras for learning, playing, being productive and staying in touch. In addition, the new Gateway NE notebooks feature an all-new design that is sleek and stylish; its matte black finish is highlighted by brushed stainless steel accents.

"The new Gateway NE Series delivers what families and students are looking for today -- a combination of the most popular features and proven technologies," said Eric Ackerson, mobile product marketing for Gateway. "This new notebook line delivers the outstanding performance and capabilities needed for classes, homework, staying in touch and having fun. Students and families planning back-to-school purchases will definitely want to consider the Gateway NE Series."

Futuremark is proud to announce that Acer Incorporated, Intel, Qualcomm Incorporated and SingTel-Optus have joined its Benchmark Development Program to create a new 3DMark gaming benchmark for Android-based tablets and smartphones. The Futuremark Benchmark Development Program gathers input and expertise from the world's best and most technologically advanced companies to create industry standard benchmarks for performance measurement. 3DMark for Android is expected to be released later this year.

Jukka Makinen, Futuremark CEO said, "For more than 10 years, we have worked with the world's leading PC hardware manufacturers to create 3DMark and PCMark. As a result, Futuremark benchmarks are the industry standard for PC performance measurement used by hundreds of press publications and millions of end-users. As we bring 3DMark to a new OS for the first time, we are excited to expand our cooperation to include Acer, Intel, Qualcomm and SingTel-Optus, technology leaders who will bring unparalleled insight, experience and vision to the development of 3DMark for Android."

EVGA is celebrating its 13th Anniversary and the way we like to do that is by thanking our community and giving away tons of prizes for participating in tons of games. We have so many prizes to giveaway that the list is too long to include here… but they all add up to more than an incredible $70k!

Our 13th Anniversary Grand Prize that will see three lucky winners sent undercover to Florida, USA, for an unforgettable 007 Mission Experience. Each of our Secret Service agents will be swept away in limos, scooped up in helicopters, sent tumbling in stunt planes and thrust through the waves in offshore raceboats.

EA has made a major push into PC digital distribution with Origin, and it seems to be paying off. Analysts have predicted that we're heading toward an all-digital age, and EA intends to speed up the process by actively moving toward that goal itself. "We'll continue to deliver games in whatever media formats make sense and as one ebbs and one starts to flow, we'll go in that direction," EA Games president Frank Gibeau said. "Ultimately Electronic Arts, at some point in the future - much like your question about streaming and cloud - we're going to be a 100% digital company, period. It's going to be there some day. It's inevitable." He also noted the problem that many in the industry have pointed out: our only measure of tracking sales numbers is through NPD, which tracks retail sales but has lagged behind on reporting digital numbers. Part of that is probably that the large digital marketplace Steam is reluctant to share its sales data, but it still creates a definite issue of incomplete data. "I think one of the problems with this industry right now is that people tend to look at it like they're looking at an elephant through a straw," he told GI.biz. "They only see a little parts of it and they're not looking at the total picture, right? Between Facebook, social, mobile, free to play on PC, Asia, consoles... it's a vibrant, growing, huge market. An occasional bad report from NPD, which measures a sliver of what's actually happening in gaming gives people an erroneous impression."

Seagate Technology plc., today introduced Backup Plus storage devices - its reinvented consumer storage product family that delivers the easiest setup, one-click backup and the ability to save and share your content on Facebook and Flickr.

Seagate Backup Plus hard drives are newly designed external storage that work interchangeably with both Windows and Apple computers and deliver new features to protect, share and save nearly every aspect of one's digital life. These products come loaded with the new hassle-free Seagate Dashboard software for one-click local backup making it easier than ever to eliminate excuses or apprehensions about backing up one's most valuable digital content. Seagate Backup Plus products are the world's first external hard drives to provide backup for content on social networks, such as Facebook and Flickr. Storing a local duplicate copy of photos from social networks is now as easy as backing up files on your computer. Seagate Backup Plus will provide the peace of mind that every aspect of one's digital life is safe from loss.

Microsoft Corp. and Facebook announced today a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will assign to Facebook the right to purchase a portion of the patent portfolio it recently agreed to acquire from AOL Inc. Facebook has agreed to purchase this portion for $550 million in cash.

In the initial AOL auction, Microsoft secured the ability to own or assign approximately 925 U.S. patents and patent applications plus a license to AOL's remaining patent portfolio, which contains approximately 300 additional patents that were not for sale. As a result of today's agreement, Facebook will obtain ownership of approximately 650 AOL patents and patent applications, plus a license to the AOL patents and applications that Microsoft will purchase and own.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Linux Creator and Linux Foundation Fellow Linus Torvalds is a Millennium Technology Prize laureate. This prize, determined by the Technology Academy of Finland, is one of the world's largest such prizes with candidates sought from across the world and from all fields of technology.

The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every two years for innovations improving the quality of human life and encouraging sustainable development. Universities, research institutions, scientific and engineering academies, and high-tech companies from around the globe make nominations. The International Selection Committee, nominated by TAF Board, reviews the nominations and determines the year's laureates. The Board makes the final decision on who will be the recipients of the prize, which is together established by Finnish industry and state.

NVIDIA teased what could be an upcoming product on its Facebook page. The teaser picture shows a black surface with NVIDIA "eye" logo etched onto it, and a caption that reads "It's Coming". Speculation is rife, on what that could be. Our own guess is that that's a graphics card pictured with the top of its cooler facing upwards, and rear panel bracket facing forwards (one could see what look like the exhaust vents). Could this be the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 690, or something entirely different? We know for one that this most definitely has something to do with the GeForce brand (and not other brands such as Tegra, Tesla, Quadro, etc.,) since it was posted on the NVIDIA GeForce Facebook page.

Today, SteelSeries, the leading global manufacturer of competitive gaming peripherals announced that this weekend during the Major League Gaming (MLG) Winter Championship in Columbus, Ohio, attendees and professional players will have an opportunity to provide feedback about the mouse, mousepad and keyboard designs for the upcoming SteelSeries and MLG co-branded products.

"We introduced the SteelSeries Design by Gamers campaign in 2011 by asking our large Facebook community which mouse design they preferred; and as a direct result of this feedback, we released the black and orange SteelSeries Kana Mouse. We are taking that concept to the next level together with Major League Gaming," said SteelSeries CMO, Kim Rom. "MLG Winter Championship attendees will be asked what features, functionality and designs they prefer. What better way to understand exactly what the MLG gamers, audience and fans want out of their peripherals than by asking them first hand?"

Cooler Master, an industry leading chassis, thermal solution, peripheral, and accessory manufacturer today announced the beginning of the ultimate March Madness sales event.

Just as March Madness brings about exciting new match-ups between the finest players in college basketball, Cooler Master's HAF Time Showdown unveils never before seen deals that will border on madness all throughout the month of March. Get some of the best parts for a computer build by following our deals.

Facebook Inc., has finally filed to go public with its IPO, with plans to raise US $5 billion, according to a figure used to calculate the registration fee. The company seeks to trade under the ticker symbol "FB", although it did not list an exchange. It is speculated by those close to the company that Facebook is aiming at a far greater offering that will value to the company close to $100 billion. Facebook also provided some interesting stats about its operations in its filing. The EDGAR filing documents can be accessed here.

Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6 June 2012.

Organized by the Internet Society, and building on the successful one-day World IPv6 Day event held on 8 June 2011, World IPv6 Launch represents a major milestone in the global deployment of IPv6. As the successor to the current Internet Protocol, IPv4, IPv6 is critical to the Internet's continued growth as a platform for innovation and economic development.

The draconian internet censorship bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) being lobbied for by wealthy big media corporations (mostly fronted by the RIAA/MPAA, News Corporation and the like) and currently being debated in Congress is still losing support wherever one turns. A week ago, we reported that GoDaddy initially supported it, but soon changed its mind as it immediately began to haemorrhage customers. Now, it turns out that many video games companies are also coming out against it and with no pressure against them required.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is the game industry's trade association and stands firmly behind the much-despised bill, which means that the gaming industry as a whole is deemed to support SOPA. However, while some members openly support it, others just won't say so publically and some of its members actively do not support it, having made official statements to this effect. Here are just three of them:

Commtouch (NASDAQ: CTCH) today published an in-depth analysis of 2011 Facebook attacks within its Internet Threats Trend Report, a year-end synopsis of Internet threats. The report and infographic present a comprehensive analysis of scores of malicious Facebook activities during the past year, as identified by Commtouch Labs. Affiliate marketing sites are the final destination in three-fourths of all Facebook deceptions, according to the report. Visitors to these sites are induced to fill out surveys that generate affiliate payments for the scammers, victimizing legitimate businesses that pay affiliate fees.

Users are induced to click on the scams through social engineering tactics such as free merchandise offers, celebrity news, new (fake) Facebook applications, or simply a trusted friend sending a message stating: "You have to see this!" After users first click on the scams, malware or malicious scripts are to blame for the further spread of slightly over half the analyzed scams, with those falling into three main categories: likejacking, rogue applications, and malware or "self-XSS," each of which is described in the report.