Earlier this month Maingear rolled out its Shift personal supercomputer and it was pretty impressive. With the ATI HD 5970, going live today it’s natural for us to see some new gaming desktops that offer the card inside and the Shift is one of those machines.

Maingear is offering the Shift with both single HD 5970 and dual HD 5970 configurations. The dual 5970 configuration promises 10 teraflops of visual compute power. That is a lot of graphics oomph and should make mincemeat of your favorite video game.

After weeks of leaked pictures, specs, and pricing AMD went official today with the new HD 5970 video card. The card is the dual GPU beast that we have been hearing about for weeks now and we finally have the full specs list.

The card has dual GPUs with 3200 total stream processing units, 160 total texture units, and a GDDR5 memory interface. The card has 2GB of RAM clocked at 1GHz and the core clock for the card is 725MHz. the total number of transistors inside the card is 4.3 billion.

Companies are starting to get more into environmental packaging. The latest is Dell. Dell gets just a little greener by adding bamboo in its product packaging portfolio. And they are the first in the PC industry to do it.

It applies to all Dell Inspiron Mini 10 and Mini 10v netbooks shipped from today onward. Bamboo is used as product cushions cradling the Mini within an outer box that is made from 25% post-consumer materials. Starting early next year, Dell hopes to expand their use of bamboo packaging to a wider range of it’s products.

Most people have dismissed the once rumored phone as being the Google Android operating system, but word on the street is that Google has an actual piece of hardware is in the works. Apparently Google has an actual phone in the works.

And apparently the Google Phone will be even more exciting than the Motorola Droid, which is really saying something. Google won’t manufacture the handset, but will rely on a major mobile company while Google is in full control of design and specifications.

This USB Hurricane lamp allows you to feel like you are in a mine shaft as you type away on your laptop. Just plug it in and it will illuminate your workspace. The flame is color-changing, so you can easily set it to suit your mood.

You’ll be rocking a 4″ plastic hurricane lamp with 7 color changing lights my friend. Only $9.69. What more do you want? You already plug everything else in your USB port. Why not?

Originally it was rumored for an October release date, but then that changed to November 17th and sure enough Tony Hawk Ride was all ready to go on November 17. It will cost you $120 and the game/peripheral combo let you do all of the simulated skateboarding you want on the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

European availability is December 4 with Amazon for $149. So go get your fake skateboard and park it next to your fake guitar and drum set.

Google has updated it’s Google Earth iPhone app. The updates come about a year after the original Google Earth iPhone App was released. Google Earth 2.0 will play nice with the iPhone and iPod Touch, and the new version has a bunch of new features, like the ability to view maps that you create on your PC on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

That one should prove most convenient. Another feature is the updated icon selection, which makes it easier to use. When you touch an icon on the app it will glow, and if you touch more than one icon at once it will take you to a list of icons so you can select the right one.

This is one of the more interesting alarm clock concepts we’ve seen lately. Designed by Henrik Amberla, the innovative design of the Milky Way serves two functions.

It functions as an alarm clock of course, but it’s also a nice piece of art. Want to activate the snooze function? Just turn the device. Setting the clock and the alarm is as easy as doing another turning motion. The Milky Way Alarm Clock is only a concept right now sadly.

Music is interesting not just for the way it sounds, but for what it is. We hear music through our ears, but really music is just vibrations in the air. Those vibrations allow the deaf to “feel” rather than hear the music. SOUNZZZ is designed to allow the hearing impaired to enjoy music just like we do.

The sound gets translated into stronger vibrations that are felt by holding the weird egg-shaped device. It will also play a light show along with the vibrations and even has a headphone jack for people who can hear who may want to use it while playing music.

It’s not that hard for a parent to figure out if their toddler has peed their diaper, but when it comes to old folks, maybe it could be a big help. A research laboratory at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University has developed a monitoring system for wet diapers. It consists of a self-powered sensor/transmitter and a receiver and is designed to assist the staff in hospitals and nursing homes with diaper checks. The sensor kit needs to be placed inside the diaper and then it sends signals to the receiver.

The sensor and the wireless transmitter are powered by a built-in battery that generates electricity using a chemical reaction in the presence of urine. That’s when you know. You have pee-pee.

Looks like a major Wiltshire town is buzzing with excitement as they are about to become the first in the UK to be able to enjoy free public wireless internet access. Swindon Borough Council plans for all 186,000 citizens to soon be swaddled under a blanket “Wi-Fi mesh” by April 2010.

With no connection charge while line rentals are free. The service will be called Signal, but here’s the catch. You will have limited access unless you pay for 20Mb upgrades. The fee is said to be “significantly less” than current broadband suppliers.

Check out these Robolamps from Croatian artist Robert Matysiak. They are all kinds of awesome and I want one now. They’re made from plumbing supplies and green or yellow light bulbs, which is probably what gives them their unique look.

Sadly they aren’t available to the public just yet. That’s a real shame because geeks like me would clean them out. They’re robots. They’re lamps. Enough said.

There have been some rumors lately that Barnes & Noble wouldn’t be accepting its own gift cards for ebook purchases, but the company now denies those claims. The company says that they will be accepting physical gift cards and online gift certificates as payment for ebooks very soon.

The cards will work on purchases made on B&N’s website and also for sales through the Nook itself. It also applies to other devices that use B&N’s eReader software. The new policy goes into effect in “mid-December.”

Dell’s thinnest laptop ever still isn’t shipping out to consumers, but at least the Windows 7 machine is now configurable over on Dell’s website. The base price is $1,799 and includes a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 CPU, a 128GB solid state drive, 13.4-inch WLED panel, 2 megapixel camera, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, GS45 integrated graphics, WiFi and a USB Ethernet adapter.

Sadly most of the components are not upgradable, but there are a few upgrades available if you have the money. You’re looking at a December 22nd estimated ship date.

I’ll be honest; I don’t get the desire for video calling. I can see if you have family or friends that you don’t get to see otherwise it might be appealing. For me, I don’t want to talk to most of the people who call me, much less see them. Still if video calling is one of the things you want, Saygus has announced that its VPhone will support 2-way video calls and is the first to do so.

The VPhone will operate on the Verizon network and has a VGA quality forward facing camera for video calls and a 5MP camera on the rear with flash and autofocus for pictures. The handset has a large 3.5-inch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480 that supports multi-touch.