VR-Zone

Like leather? Enough to buy a keyboard with even its keys made out of genuine leather? Then the Honkawa 2 real-leather keyboard from Japanese accessories maker Atelier Wagakura ("Wagakura Koubou" in their native tongue) may be just be what you need to complete your life.

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Measuring only 6.65 mm in thickness, the Oppo Finder is now the world’s thinnest phone.  The Chinese manufacturer Oppo somehow crammed a 1.5 GHz dual core, a 4.3 inch AMOLED PLUS display, 1 GB RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage into the Finder.  Advancements in engineering of memory chips and other electrical components of smart phones have made it possible for manufacturers to slim down phones.  However, the heat factor that coincides with CPU/GPU integration is still one of the biggest hurdles for engineers to overcome.

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Here's a heartening story: upon hearing that replacing the thermal grease in your spanking new Ivy Bridge processor will make it run cooler, one DIY shop in Akihabara has taken it upon themselves to show patrons how it's done - by providing a mock-up made of copper for them to practice with, and offering a 1,000 yen (US$13) discount on brand new i7-3770K chips to folks who've damaged their CPUs when they tried to tear off the integrated heat spreader in a real attempt.

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While the sale of Xbox might be banned in the United States, development of Halo 4 remains undeterred.  Some new concept art have made their way onto the internet, and the world of Master Chief just got a lot more mysterious, shinier, and sharper.

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ViewSonic will reveal its 22 inch Android ICS tablet this June at the Computex event in Taipei.  The marketing department at ViewSonic designed an ad that promotes the 22 inch behemoth as a device that not only “touch” but also “connect.”  I’m sure the touch correlates with the touch interface, but what is it that ViewSonic is trying to connect with?

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Several days ago, Jon Peddie Research released its GPU report for the first quarter of 2012. The report originally claimed that NVIDIA lost around 4.3% of the market, while Intel and AMD grew. Revised release corrected that share loss to 1.5%.

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For many of us, if we go near a pool, a Ziploc bag will be more than enough to protect our phones from water damage.  However, for those who are especially paranoid then Kyocera has a water resistant mid-range Android phone as an extra precautionary measure.

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Gigabyte's OEM motherboard division has been busy churning out new products and one of its latest additions is the MSQ77DI, a mini-ITX motherboard based on Intel's Q77 chipset. The board is sadly not intended for end-user sales, as it's made to go into white-box All-in-One or AIO systems, but it's still a pretty interesting little board.

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Details of Dell's upcoming Windows 8 tablets – although admittedly one is a convertible – has turned up online and it looks like Dell is planning on offering some pretty interesting hardware. Both devices are powered by Intel processors, so if you were hoping for ARM products from Dell, well then these aren't the Droids products you've been looking for.

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Recently, Foxconn worked out an agreement with Sharp Corp to obtain details for making Apple’s iPhone new touch display, but apparently that wasn’t enough as a report from micgadet.com indicated that Foxconn is determined to take over the iPhone manufacturing industry totally.

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If the rumour mill is true, then it looks like Windows 8 will cost more than previous versions of Windows, at least to Microsoft's OEM partners. There's no word on by how much Microsoft wanted to raise the price, but apparently it's a significant amount.

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According to fresh rumours, Facebook might be looking at snapping up Norwegian web-browser maker Opera.  There have been plenty of talks about a wide range of things from Facebook, mostly smartphones, but a browser has been mentioned in the past and this could be a fast track way for the company to get one.

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Many people have been wondering what Google’s Project Glass is all about, and some recent images and a 15 seconds video may provide some insights into Google’s motive.  There’s no doubt that Google is putting its financial backing into the technology that it’s trying to cram into the diminutive eyewear, so I expect the gadget to be something geeks everywhere to drool over.

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Want a Samsung Galaxy Note knock-off that looks just like the real McCoy, actually has pretty decent specs, and is way cheaper (19,800 yen or US$248.52)? Then head on over to aPad specialist store in Akihabara, where Akiba PC Watch stumbled upon an Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone with a design flourish so similar to the Note's that Samsung would probably sue. Except they won't know who to take to court - this device is unbranded.

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Shortly after release, a severe security flaw was discovered in the Chrome Axis extension released by Yahoo.

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The SpaceX Dragon supply ship is making its final approach to the International Space Station (ISS) after a successful launch that could hint at the future of space exploration and colonisation by private corporations.

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Motorola Mobility has been found guilty of infringing several of Microsoft's patents relating to mobile phone text messages, exacerbating a growing dispute between the two companies.

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Blizzard has denied reports of major security issues concerning Diablo III and has promised a patch next week that will improve server stability and usability for all players.

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Shenzhen-based Huawei has grown from a Cisco competitor to a global giant engaging in everything telecoms and IT alike, with mobile devices being one of their major focuses. Here we talk to their top phone and tablet guys, Frederic Fleurance and David Wei, on the directions forward.

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Asus will be releasing an updated version of its Zenbook UX31 ultraportable laptop soon.  The Zenbook UX31 is currently one of the more popular ultrabook on the market, and Asus intends to stay true to the UX31’s ultra sleek, ultra-portable, and ultra low voltage design.  Asus introduced the Zenbook Prime UX32VD prototype at its 2012 Investor Meeting, and from the pictures released the UX32VD looks almost exactly like its predecessor.

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